feels like the first time
by Flotation Device
Summary: Six kisses on the Cape, featuring Dawson, Joey, Jen, Pacey, and Jack.


Just a bunch of kids making out, honestly. This is what happens when you watch all of Dawson's Creek in two weeks. It gets to you.

Featuring Dawson, Joey, Jen, Pacey, and Jack. Enjoy!

* * *

Sometimes, he can't understand how they got here.

But then again, sometimes, it feels like he's been waiting his entire life to kiss Joey Potter.

To Dawson, Joey has always been sharp, and smart, and cynical, and stable; and now, suddenly, he sees whole new sides to her that he has never seen before. There is a sweetness to her, and a softness, that separates Joey his Best Friend and Joey his Girlfriend.

And now, he is Dawson, Joey Potter's Boyfriend, and there is a world of interactions that has opened up before him. Dawson the Friend got to watch movies with her, and talk with her, and sleep with her, and ask her for advice; Dawson the Boyfriend gets to put his arms around her, and hold her hand, and talk dirty with her in the hallways. Because that's what boyfriends do.

And Dawson the Boyfriend gets to kiss her.

He wraps his arms around her waist where they're standing on the pier, turns her in his arms, and kisses her gently, reveling in the feeling of her in his arms.

When he pulls away, her eyes flutter open and she smiles, wrinkling her nose at him. "What was that for?" she asks, fingers playing with the collar of his shirt.

"It's my prerogative," he replies, and smiles back.

O

"Are we really doing this?" Joey asks, picking up the empty bottle.

"Not to agree with little miss killjoy, over here," says Pacey next to her, leaning back on his hands and looking annoyed. "But I'm gonna have to agree with little miss killjoy."

"Bite me," she says viciously. He smiles condescendingly.

"We'll get there." She scowls at him, and he winks. "But seriously - spin the bottle? This game went out of style about the same time disco did."

"Pacey, shut up," says Andie cheerfully. "Joey, spin the bottle already!"

She sighs, sets the bottle spinning on the parquet floor, and glares around the circle for good measure. Andie claps her hands in excitement, like she has for every turn so far. Pacey starts humming the jeopardy theme.

The bottle starts to slow down. It drifts from Dawson (which would be _way_ too awkward and basically completely unacceptable), to Jack (who would be only slightly less uncomfortable, but there would probably be less glaring involved all around), to Andie (who at this point looks about ready to burst with excitement), to Tony Abbott (who admittedly wouldn't be terrible, even if he does have a stupid haircut), to Abby Morgan (who would probably suck her soul out through her mouth, but, hey, there are worse things), before stopping on...

"Pucker up, buttercup," says Jen tonelessly, getting to her knees and shuffling across the circle. Pacey cackles delightedly. She elbows him in the ribs. Hard.

"Whatever," she mumbles as he yelps, rocking forward to her knees. In front of her, Jen is alternating between smiling and biting her lip. Joey brushes her hair behind her ears and leans forward, very slowly.

She is conscious of Pacey whistling, and of the eyes of everyone in the circle on her, staring. But more than that, she is conscious of Jen: her eyelashes black against her cheeks, her eyes closed, her lips smudged purple, slightly parted. Her hair falls across her forehead. She can smell the wine on her breath as she closes in and presses her lips against hers, softly, hesitantly, and then more firmly as she negotiates the angles of their heads and the position of their teeth. Her mouth is soft and warm and tastes of alcohol; her skin smells like vanilla. She can feel Jen's hand against her arm, and then as quickly as it's there, it's gone again, and Jen is pulling away, blinking, running her tongue over her teeth and giggling. Joey rolls her eyes and drops back onto the floor.

"That," says Pacey, wiping a mock tear away from his eye. "Was beautiful. I rescind my earlier statements, this game is amazing. I could die happy."

"That can be arranged," she mutters murderously as Jen fixes the strap on her dress, grabs the bottle, and sends it spinning.

O

So they haven't worked their way up to the full sex yet. And honestly, that's fine. But a girl's got needs, one way or another, and today, Jennifer Lindley does not have time to play by the rules.

She snags him as he's swaggering out of history, grabs him by the back of the shirt and hauls him off down the hallway before the after-class rush starts.

"Woah there, easy with the merchandise," he says, staggering after her. "Nice to see you too, Lindley."

"Can it, Pacey."

"Testy, are we? Although, whatever evil it may be that's plaguing you, I would just like to contend that I probably had nothing to do with it. Which brings me to my query: what's with the manhandling? Ow," he adds, as she looks left, right, and shoves him into the janitor's closet. "So that's how it's gonna be, huh?" he asks, straightening his shirt.

"Look," she says. "It's been a long day," and then pushes him against the door and presses her mouth against his.

Pacey, as she has been learning lately, can do a lot more with his mouth than just run it. He turns them around so that it's her back to the wood, his left hand against her jaw, his right on the back of her head, and nips at her bottom lip before opening his mouth into a hot, open-mouthed kiss that is _exactly_ what she needs after a B- in english and a C in algebra. She cards her hands through his hair and slips one under his shirt, pressing against his shoulder as he pulls away with _just_ the right amount of tongue.

He presses his mouth below her ear. "Don't you have class?" he mutters, bringing his hands down around her waist.

"Fuck it," she breathes, and pulls him back in for another round.

O

He'll admit it: he has no idea what to do with himself. Between awkwardly hustling back into the house, awkwardly getting to bed with everyone else and then awkwardly driving home the next afternoon, they haven't really had a chance to talk. At all. Which means he has no idea where they stand, only he definitely feels like he's on uneven ground. And now it's Monday and Pacey's sitting in his boat, which, unbelievably, is almost done, looking into the distance and freezing his ass off for want of anything better to do, and frankly, it fucking sucks.

Okay, it's not really for want of anything better to do. If he's honest with himself, it's because he's a coward and it's not his _fault_ , really, that she can show up to school after a week like that and still have her hair look perfect and her eyes look all dark and sparkly even when she's _clearly_ refusing to look at him, and what is he supposed to do when she's biting her lip like that all the time?

He groans and screws his eyes shut, dropping his head into his hands. And then suddenly, of course, there she is.

"Um," she says. "Hey." His head snaps over towards her without his permission. Joey's standing at the foot of the ladder in a knit beanie and big sweater, squinting up at him against the sky. "Permission to come aboard?"

"Uh," he replies intelligently. "Yeah, granted, of course." He stands up and offers her his hand without thinking, and then considers throwing himself off his own boat when she looks at it blankly for what feels like a year. She reaches up slowly and fits her palm against his, and his arm feels like there's electricity coursing through it as he helps her up the ladder.

This is moronic, he thinks. This is insane.

She clambers aboard carefully and then sits down gingerly next to him, looking at the deck between her knees. She pulls her hat off her head to card her fingers through her hair. He looks away, focusing all his energy on not staring at her like the lovestruck idiot that he is.

"So, we haven't really talked," she says at length. Her tone is hesitant, troubled. His heart throbs in his chest; his stomach flips. "Um, about last week. And, I've been thinking a lot about what you said. And about what I wanna say." He chances a glance at her. She's biting her lip. Fuck. "Because this whole thing is so complicated, and there's just so many things to think about, you know, so many people, so many factors, and it's just so much. It's too much."

His heart sinks. He's surprised to find that he's wringing his hands. He forces them to lie still on his lap.

"It's so much that I don't even know how to begin talking about it. But you know, what I realized," she continues. "Pacey." He looks up at his name, and glances at her from the corner of his eye. She's looking right at him. "Pacey, I'm tired of talking, too."

He's half turned toward her. When did that happen? When did he lose control of his body? She looking at him, and there's that little furrow between her eyebrows she gets when she's thinking hard, and her hair is swept behind her ears, and her eyes are big and dark and almost hopeful. And is it him, or is her face closer than it used to be? "Pacey, I'm tired of talking," she repeats softly, and she's definitely leaning in now, and her eyes are fluttering shut, and suddenly her hand is bunched in the front of his shirt and his is on the back of her head and their mouths are pressed together, and he doesn't know if he kissed her or if she kissed him but he knows that he feels hot and cold and light headed and rooted in place and basically certain that there is nowhere else in the world that he would rather be than here.

He pulls away slowly and rests his forehead against hers, feeling her breath against his mouth, running his fingers down her cheek. "Yeah," he says hoarsely. "I'm pretty much done with talking. Screw talking. Let's just never talk again, yeah?"

She laughs and trembles beneath his hands, and then he kisses her, or she kisses him, and then it's him, and then her, then her, then him, then her, then him, on and on until he finally forgets to keep track.

O

"Thanks for coming over, Jack," says Joey, crossing her legs under her so she can reach the Worthington application across the floor.

"Hey, you know me. At your service," he says, grinning. She smiles back at him, and hits the pile of papers in her hands against the coffee table, trying to get them straightened.

"There's just so much _paper_. I'm almost less worried about my chances of getting in than I am scared of mixing up all these forms and cheques and envelopes."

He laughs. "Well, that's one way to redirect your anxiety. Oh, hey, you missed one." He passes her a form from behind him on the floor. She makes a face, grabs it from him, and then begins flipping through the pile, looking for its place. "Anyway, I think I should get going."

"You don't want to stay for dinner?"

"Thanks, but I can't," he replies, getting up and stretching his shoulders. "Grams is expecting me. I hear she's making chicken pot pie."

"Can't miss that," Joey agrees, dropping the papers onto the table with finality and standing up as well.

"No sirree."

She walks him to the door and waits as he slides his coat on. "Well, anyway, I'll see you at school," she says and leans up towards his cheek.

Which is, of course, the same moment that he turns his head to say something like 'Yeah, see you then' and lands his mouth right on the corner of hers.

They freeze for a moment, eyes wide, bodies tense. And then they burst out laughing.

"Oh, oh my god, I'm so sorry," she chokes out, bent over at the waist and shaking.

"No, god no, it's—it's my fault," he forces out, staggering over to lean against the wall.

Bessie comes around the corner from the kitchen. "Joey, I need you to—hey, what's going on here?" She stares at her sister, then at him, then back again, holding Alexander in one arm and a spatula in the other.

"N—nothing," Joey manages, before bursting into a fresh round of giggles.

"No, seriously," Bessie insists, smiling slowly. "What's so funny?"

They keep laughing.

O

"Be my boyfriend, for a minute, would you?"

"What?" he says, because it's loud in the bar and there's no way that he heard that right.

"Be my boyfriend!" Jen shouts in his ear, leaning in close to be heard over the music.

"What are you talking about?" he yells back, propping himself up against the bar. Instead of answering him, she points behind her shoulder. He follows her gaze to a tall, black-haired guy with a nose piercing, who's clearly watching them but pretending he doesn't care. Jack rolls his eyes. "No," he says firmly.

"Aw, come on," she wheedles, leaning into him. "Do me a favour, would you?"

"How is this even going to help?" he asks, eyeing the guy dubiously.

"You have much to learn, young grasshopper," she yells back. "Don't question my hunting methods. They are tried and true."

He frowns at her, and then glances at the guy again, who is now throwing back a beer and pretending to be interested in something the tall brunette next to him is saying. "Alright," he says. "Fine."

Jen's face lights up. "Thank you thank you thank you!" she yells, and then reaches up, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and planting a kiss right on his mouth. He stiffens, but she keeps at it, tilting her head to make it look more like he's actually into it. She grabs one of his hands and forces it around her waist, before running her hand up his arm. After a few more seconds, she pulls away and pretends to kiss his neck. "Is he looking?" she mutters into his collarbone.

"Er," he says, squinting. "Yeah, he's looking."

"Awesome," she says happily, pulling away. "You've been an excellent fake boyfriend. Ten out of ten. Thank you for your services." She throws him a smile, shakes her hair out, kisses his cheek and then flounces off to the dancefloor. It only take Mr. Nose Ring a minute to go after her.

Jack shakes his head and turns back to the bar, feeling distinctly exploited, and decides that this is the last time he's letting Jen bring him to a straight club.

* * *

Hope you enjoyed this nonsense. Which one was your favourite? Don't forget to review!


End file.
